All-Party Groups
Introduction
1. In our Ninth Report of 2005-06, we reported on
the outcome of an investigation carried out by the then Parliamentary
Commissioner for Standards, Sir Philip Mawer, into a complaint
against six named All Party Groups (APGs).[1]
The complaint was that the six Groups had breached the rules requiring
Groups for which secretariat services are provided by a public
relations company to name in their entry in the Register of APGs
the ultimate client of the company which is meeting the cost of
this assistance. We agreed with the then Commissioner that the
complaint should be upheld in relation to three of the Groups,
and that it should not be upheld in relation to the other three.
2. The complainant—the then Editor of The
Times newspaper—had also suggested that the cause of
the alleged breach might lie in an apparent discrepancy between
the wording of the Rules and guidance issued by the office of
the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards. In the light of
this, the then Commissioner made seven specific recommendations
for reform of the APG regulatory regime generally. He later suggested
a further reform, to align the requirements relating to inclusion
of Groups in the Register and in the separate Approved List.
This would mean that groups would only be included on the Register
if they were able to meet the rather more demanding rules that
apply to groups that qualify for inclusion on the Approved List.
3. In our Report, we noted the then Commissioner's
view that, taken together, the seven recommendations represented
a proportionate approach, which would improve transparency and
accountability without imposing undue fresh burdens on APGs. We
also announced a period of consultation on the recommendations
and we wrote to each Group. We were disappointed to receive very
few comments, although we are most grateful to those who did take
the trouble to reply.
4. Due to the need to give the fullest consideration
to some very complex issues, it has taken us longer than we would
have wished to produce our conclusions. However, we are now ready
to present our considered view to the House, together with our
recommendations for changes to the rules and procedures applying
to both listed and registered All-Party Groups.
The
original recommendations for change
5. We deal first with each of the former Commissioner's
recommendations in turn.
Recommendation 1
In future, where a Group is assisted by an outside
consultancy, the names of any clients of the consultancy with
a direct interest in the work of the Group should be listed in
the Register. Similarly, where assistance is provided by a charity
or not-for-profit organisation, the name of any commercial company
with a direct interest in the work of the APG which contributes
materially (say more than £5,000 or 5%, whichever is the
lower) to meeting the central costs of the charity should be listed.
The aim of the change would be to ensure that any relationship
that could reasonably be viewed as presenting a potential conflict
of interest should be recorded in the Register.
Consultancies
6. The first part of Recommendation 1 is designed
to promote transparency about the interests of consultancies acting
as the secretariat to a Group. Currently, if a consultancy acts
as a Group's secretariat and provides benefits to the value of
£1,500 or more to the Group in a calendar year, the Group
is required to register the name of the consultancy and also the
name of any client of that consultancy who is specifically paying
them to provide those services. There is no requirement to register
either consultancies that do not meet that financial threshold
or clients that do not employ the consultancy to provide such
services.
7. The effect of the first part of Recommendation
1 is to extend the current requirements so that Groups would in
future have to:
a) register any consultancy acting as
a Group's secretariat (ie irrespective of the financial threshold
of £1,500); and
b) register any clients with a direct interest
in the work of the Group, meaning all clients whose business could
be said to be directly affected by the subject matter covered
by the Group.
8. The general principle of the Register is that
benefits worth less than £1,500 in a calendar year should
not be registered. In our view, the Register should remain a financial
register rather than a register of engagement. We therefore propose
that the new requirement set out in paragraph 7(a) should not
apply where the worth of the secretarial assistance is less than
£1,500 a year.
9. If the change outlined in paragraph 7(b) were
implemented, it would be necessary in each case for a judgment
to be made as to whether an interest is direct or indirect, and
this raises the question of who should make this judgment. Secondly,
the requirement could lead to the registration of a long list
of clients, particularly where the Group concerned has a wide-ranging
remit (eg health). This could significantly increase the volume
of the Register, and risk obscuring the essential elements the
Register is intended to identify. Thirdly, it is likely also that
the list would require regular updating as companies amended their
lists of clients, thus increasing both the workload and the risk
of mistakes.
10. Implementing the change in paragraph 7(b) would
thus increase the length of the Register and would have resource
implementations. We are not convinced that these disadvantages
are outweighed by having all the possible information in the same
place.
11. Instead, we suggest that the objective outlined
in paragraph 7(b) could equally and more simply be achieved by
putting the onus on the consultancies themselves to be transparent
about their clientele. To this end, we recommend that it be a
prerequisite for the registration of any Group that, if it is
supported by a consultancy providing services worth more than
£1,500 a year, that consultancy should either publish a list
of its clients on its website or provide such a list on request.
We understand that such transparency is in any case regarded as
best practice by the Association of Professional Political Consultants
and by the Public Relations Consultants' Association.[2]
Charities
12. The second part of Recommendation 1 is designed
to promote transparency about the interests of charities and not-for-profit
organisations acting as the secretariat to a Group. Currently,
if a charity or not-for-profit organisation acts as a Group's
secretariat and provides benefits to the value of £1,500
or more to the Group in a calendar year, the Group is required
to register the name of the charity or not-for-profit organisation.
There is no requirement to register charities or not-for-profit
organisations that do not meet that financial threshold, nor is
it necessary to register the commercial backers of those bodies.
13. The effect of the second part of Recommendation
1 is to extend the current requirements so that Groups would in
future have to:
a) register any charity or not-for-profit organisation
acting as a Group's secretariat (ie irrespective of the financial
threshold of £1,500); and
b) register any commercial company with a direct
interest in the work of the APG which contributes materially (say
more than £5,000 or 5%, whichever is the lower) to meeting
the central costs of the charity.
14. The change outlined in paragraph 13(a) would,
again, import inconsistency into the Register by ignoring the
usual financial threshold. We therefore recommend against implementation
of this part of Recommendation 1, thus maintaining the Register
as a register of financial interest rather than one of engagement.
15. The change outlined in paragraph 13(b) would
impose compliance costs on charities since, under current charity
law, charities are not always required to disclose the source
of their funding. Also, charities do not always separate core
from other costs in their accounts. As charities cannot know who
contributed a given percentage of their core costs until the end
of the financial year, the requirement if implemented would need
to refer to the last financial year. However, this has the disadvantage
that a donation might be registered some time after receipt, with
a consequent reduction in transparency. We therefore reject the
option of linking the registration requirement to such a percentage.
16. The use of a simple monetary value would reduce
this risk. The difficulty here, however, lies in setting an appropriate
figure that will identify substantial financial backing when it
is not possible to know what the average income of a charity is
because this is information is not necessarily published. We therefore
find this solution also to be unrealistic.
17. Another possibility would be to adopt a similar
approach to that to be applied to consultancies providing support
to an APG—that is, to make it a condition of the registration
of a Group that any charity acting as a Group's secretariat should
agree to make public on request a list of those commercial organisations
contributing materially to meeting the central/core costs of the
charity.
18. This approach would mean that charities were
under the same obligation as consultancies in respect of the information
printed about them in the Register, rather than under a more onerous
one. We accept that it would also mean the information was less
immediately available than under Sir Philip's original proposal.
On balance, however, we believe that this is the correct approach.
In our view, it should achieve a high degree of transparency and
accountability without imposing disproportionate burdens on those
charitable organisations supporting the work of All-Party Groups.
19. We therefore recommend that a charity providing
support to an APG should be required to make available on request
a list of all those commercial companies which have donated more
than £5,000 either as a single sum or cumulatively in the
course of the twelve months prior to the month in which the request
is made. In order to mitigate any impact that might follow should
some charities choose to withdraw their support from APGs rather
than comply with the new requirement, we recommend that the new
requirement take effect not earlier than three months after the
House approves the changes.
Recommendation 2
Those providing secretariat assistance to APGs
should be required to provide information to enable a URL[3]
to be inserted in the web edition of the Register of APGs, which
would create a link the reader could follow to the relevant company's,
charity's or other body's web-site, from which published details
of the organisation's objectives, clients, membership or supporters
as appropriate may be obtained.
20. Recommendation 2 seeks to provide website links
from the Register to the website of 'those providing secretariat
assistance' to groups. We support this recommendation, subject
to two provisos. First, in line with our previous recommendation
we recommend that only those bodies providing secretariat services
worth £1,500 or more per calendar year should be registered.
Secondly, the web link should be to the body that provides direct
support to a Group (as opposed to the indirect support provided
by consultancies' clients or charities' commercial backers) since
it is they who are in a position to influence the Groups' day-to-day
activities. If the body providing support has no website, information
about the body should be provided on request. In our view, this
would pose no insuperable technical difficulties and it has no
resource implications.
Recommendation 3
Where a body has listed in the Register, in accordance
with Recommendation 1, the name of a client or commercial company,
a URL should also be provided from the Register to the web-site
(if any) of that named client or company.
21. If the House accepts our suggestions in respect
of Recommendation 1, Recommendation 3 falls. Even were Recommendation
1 to be implemented in its original form, we would suggest that
inserting all such links would distract the reader's attention
from the main purpose of the Register. Further, the work of establishing
URLs, inserting links and checking that they remain valid would
significantly increase the work involved in preparing the Register,
which would have resource implications. We do not, therefore,
support implementation of this recommendation.
Recommendation 4
Where an APG itself has a web-site, the Register
should provide a link to the Group's web-site.
22. Recommendation 4 would provide access to a range
of information about Groups (eg details of the secretariat, group
activities, publications, and sponsorship). Consequently, it is
arguably of greater use to readers of the Register than web links
which simply address a single aspect of a Group's existence (eg
those proposed to the websites of consultancies' clients). We
therefore endorse Recommendation 4.
Recommendations 5 and 6
Web-sites of APGs should themselves be explicit
about the relevant Group's sponsors and administrative support.
Publications (including reports and press releases)
produced by APGs should carry the name of their author(s), the
organisation(s) which provide secretariat services to the Group
and any relevant client or sponsor.
23. Recommendations 5 and 6 are patently in the interests
of transparency and accountability. They carry no resource implications
for the administration of the Register and we endorse them.
Recommendation 7
An officer of each APG from the Commons should
be the nominated point of contact of each Group and should also
be the person ultimately responsible for ensuring the Group's
compliance with the relevant Rules of the House.
24. Currently, the nominated point of contact for
a Group must be a either a Member or a Peer who is an officer
of the group, and responsibility for ensuring the Group's compliance
with the relevant rules of the House is shared by the Group's
'Commons officers'. The proposed change is relatively minor but,
bearing in mind that the regulation of APGs is conducted from
within the House of Commons, in our view it represents a sensible
simplification of the system, which should offer a clearer line
of accountability.
Alignment
of the rules for Registered and Approved Groups
25. The Parliamentary Commissioner's office is responsible
for compiling both the 'Register of All-Party Groups' (for which
the rules are set by the Standards and Privileges Committee) and
the 'Approved List of All-Party and Associate Parliamentary Groups'
(for which the rules are set by the Administration Committee).
The difference between the two documents and related rules is,
however, neither readily understood nor widely recognised, and
can create confusion.
The Register
26. The Register was established as a result of a
Resolution of the House of 17 December 1985 giving effect to a
recommendation of the Select Committee on Members' Interests to
enable Members more easily to ascertain what groups there are
and what assistance they receive from outside sources.[4]
The Committee noted that while the purpose of most groups is political,
some are sporting or social and that even these may have links
with outside interests of which Members have a right to be aware.
27. The Resolution of 1985 makes registration compulsory
for "Commons officers in All-Party Groups, Parliamentary
Groups, and Groups whose membership is open to Members of either
House of more than one party." [5]
Any such Group must register its title; the names of its officers;
the source of any financial or material benefit worth £1000
or more that is received by the group from a single source outside
Parliament; and any relevant gainful occupation of staff assisting
the Group who hold a Parliamentary pass.
The Approved List
28. The Approved List was introduced by the House
of Commons (Services) Committee (the predecessor of the present
Administration Committee) for a rather different purpose from
that of the Register, through a Resolution of the House of 31
October 1984.[6] The List
resulted from concerns that "some of the groups were believed
to be using the House's status, as well as its heat, light and
space, for purposes which were non-parliamentary; and the pressure
of so many bodies (groups and others) on limited accommodation
for meetings demanded some ordering of priorities which would
favour the more parliamentary at the expense of the less parliamentary."[7]
29. Being on the Approved List is not compulsory
but it does confer certain benefits. These allow the Group: to
use the All-Party Notices to advertise all Group meetings; to
include the words 'All-Party', 'Parliamentary' or 'Associate'
in the Group's title; and to have a relative priority over unlisted
groups in booking rooms in the Palace of Westminster.
30. To qualify for those privileges, an approved
Group has to comply with significantly more rules than an unapproved
one. For example, an approved Group must hold annual elections;
a minimum of 3 Members must be present at every meeting; and it
must have a minimum of 20 'qualifying members', namely 10 from
the Government party and 10 from the Opposition parties (at least
6 of whom must come from the main Opposition party) drawn from
either House. Whilst there are more rules, the fact that almost
all Groups are on the Approved List indicates that Groups generally
have not found it difficult to comply with them.
31. There are currently ten Groups which are included
on the Register but have not sought inclusion in the Approved
List. These are:
- Boxing
- China Development
- Parliamentarians for Global Action
- Balanced Migration
- Boarding Schools
- Climate Survival
- Council Housing
- European-Atlantic
- Scientific Research into Myalgic Enchephalomyelitis
- National Self Determination.
32. A Group may choose to register without seeking
approval in order not to be subject to the more demanding obligations
laid on groups on the Approved List. Other Groups may appear on
the Register but not on the Approved List because they have failed
to fulfil the requirements to be on the List, but still qualify
for inclusion in the Register.
Unregistered groups
33. In addition to the Groups on the Approved List
or on the Register there are a number of groups which have Members
from more than one party but which appear on neither list. These
include groups where membership is only by invitation; and groups
whose officers are all Members of the House of Lords. Groups open
only to Members from a single party are outside the scope of the
registration requirements. We plan to revisit the question of
how to achieve transparency and regulation of unregistered groups,
subject to implementation of the registration provisions of the
Parliamentary Standards Bill.
Difficulties caused by having
two sets of rules
34. The fact that there are currently two sets of
rules applying to registered Groups—the rules on registration,
which apply compulsorily; and the requirements for inclusion on
the Approved List, to which groups can subscribe if they wish—leads
to confusion both outside the House and among Members. In our
view, the current system is unnecessarily complex and burdensome.
Recommendation
35. To deal with this confusion, we have considered
aligning the rules for registration with those currently applying
to Groups on the Approved List. This would mean that Groups would
not be registered unless they complied with the more extensive
rules that Groups must currently meet if they wish to be on that
List.
36. The disadvantage of this course of action would
be that the Groups mentioned in paragraph 31 above would not appear
on any official record and would lose whatever official status
their current appearance in the Register might be thought to give
them. Some might see this as an undesirable reduction in the current
extent of regulation and therefore of transparency.
37. On the other hand, the number of Groups that
would drop off the official 'radar screen' would be small. Moreover,
this would not necessarily mean that sponsorship activities in
relation to them would go unnoticed. The Registrar has in the
past insisted that, where an unregistered group of Members received
sponsorship above the relevant threshold, this should be reflected
in the entry of the group's chairman in the Register of Members'
Interests. Visits by Members which are connected with membership
of the House must also be registered, with details of sponsors.
38. There are also a number of positive arguments
in favour of the change:—
- Most Groups on the Register
but not on the Approved List are 'transients'—i.e. they
are Groups which have failed to meet their obligations to remain
on the List. If removal from the List also meant removal from
the Register, and the loss therefore of any kind of official recognition,
Groups might be encouraged to strive harder to meet their obligations
to the House in order to remain officially recognised.
- Loss of all official recognition (rather than
partial loss of status, as now) might also mean that outside bodies
would be less willing to fund defaulting Groups.
- Standardising on a single set of rules would
enable the office of the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards
considerably to simplify the documentation relating to the regulation
of Groups.
- Simplification should put an end to the confusion
caused by the existence of the two separate sets of rules. The
distinction between the Register and the Approved List would disappear.
The House would have one authoritative document and one set of
rules applying to the Groups on it.
- Amalgamation of the Register and the List would
also avoid the possibility—which results from the present
existence of both—of the establishment of two different
Groups on precisely the same topic, one of them qualified to appear
on the List and the other insufficiently qualified to appear on
the List but with enough Members drawn from more than one party
to appear in the present Register.
39. Having considered the points set out above, we
conclude that the balance of advantage lies in the greater transparency
and efficiency that will be provided by a single registration
and approval regime for APGs. We therefore recommend that the
rules relating to the Register and to the Approved List should
be amalgamated. In future, only those Groups that meet the current
criteria for entry on the Approved List should be permitted to
register.
Other
proposals
40. We wish to take this opportunity to make two
further suggestions which do not arise from Sir Philip Mawer's
original recommendations but rather from the proposal to unify
the processes of registration and approval.
Declaration on current 'Application
Forms for Cross-party Groups'
41. Currently, a Commons officer of a Group has to
sign a written undertaking to abide by the rules listed in the
'Declaration' on the Application Forms for Groups. However, the
list printed on the form is no more than a summary of some, though
not all, of the rules that apply to Groups. We therefore recommend
that rules cease to be listed in the 'Declaration' and that the
officer instead be asked to confirm 'I have received and read
the Guide to the Rules on All-Party Groups and undertake to abide
by them.'
Title of forms for APGs
42. We recommend that the 'Application Forms for
Cross-Party Groups' be renamed 'Registration Form for All-Party
Groups', in line with the naming convention applied to the other
registration forms issued by the Registrar. The recommended title
would also reflect the fact that, following the unification of
the rules governing registration and approval, the membership
of registered Groups must be open to Members from all parties
rather than, as currently, open simply to Members from more than
one party.
Giving
effect to the recommendations
43. Implementation of some of the changes recommended
in this Report will require amendment of the relevant Resolutions
of the House. The remainder can be implemented administratively,
once the House has given its approval.
1 Lobbying and All Party Groups, HC1145 Back
2
See APPC Code of Conduct, available at www.apcc.org.uk, and PRCA
Professional Charter, available at www.prca.org.uk Back
3
Uniform Resource Locator-ie, a website address Back
4
Select Committee on Members' Interests, First Report, Session
1984-85 and First Report, Session 1985-86 Back
5
CJ, 1985-86, 97 Back
6
CJ, 1983-84, 787 Back
7
Second Report from the Select Committee on House of Commons (Services),
Session 1983-84, HC256, para 2 Back
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